L.A.-based architect Thom Mayne loves his home city but works in New York, too. What are his favorite buildings in both places?

The Case Study Houses, 1945-66: “The whole enterprise of the project meant so much to L.A. It’s the center of modern architecture, not New York. I had Pierre Koenig [1960’s Stahl House] as a teacher.”

The Gamble House, 1908: You wouldn’t necessarily expect Mayne to go for an Arts & Crafts classic by Greene & Greene, but he loves it. “I painted it and helped restore it as a work study,” he says.

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1959: Frank Lloyd Wright’s late masterpiece, which still manages to be controversial, is very much Mayne’s speed. “Strangely that’s still one of the only modern buildings in New York,” he says.